Newcastle Knights' grand plans for junior rep teams paying dividends

The Harold Matthews (under-16) team face Canterbury in their decider on Saturday after beating Parramatta 18-16 in last weekend's semi-final.

The SG Ball (under-19s) beat Penrith 10-8 in their semi and will take on Parramatta for the premiership.

Both grand finals will be played at Leichhardt Oval on Saturday.

Only once in their history have the Knights won two junior competitions in the same year, in 1992, when they were crowned Harold Matthews and Jersey Flegg (under-19) champions.

Three members of that Flegg team - Andrew Johns, Troy Fletcher and Scott Conley - progressed to help the Knights win their first-ever top-grade premiership five years later.

Knights chief CEO Philip Gardner said the club was starting to reap the rewards of its investment in junior development.

"The investment by Wests into the pathways is the largest in the club's history," Gardner told the Newcastle Herald.

"And it also takes commitment and hard work. Because to be successful in the junior reps is never easy. It's so competitive."

As well as the investment in their Centre of Excellence, Gardner said the Knights had upgraded junior training facilities at Wests Mayfield and Tighes Hill TAFE and would outlay in excess of $2 million on their pathways program this year. And he said the Penrith Panthers were evidence that it would be money well spent.

"To compete with Penrith, we need to do what they've done," Gardner said.

"That means investing in the right junior coaches and conditioners and covering all the other expenses, such as medical costs when players get injured.

"It's a big undertaking. But that's what we need to do.

"To win NRL competitions, we believe we need around 70 per cent of our first graders coming through the Knights' system. We won't get to 70 per cent next year. But we will get there."

The Knights have attracted flak for the emergence of former Newcastle juniors Zac Hosking (Brisbane and now Penrith), Grant Anderson (Melbourne) and Kurt Donoghoe (Dolphins) at rival clubs over the past two seasons.

But Gardner said the success of their Matthews and Ball teams this season, and their Jersey Flegg (under-21) outfit, who were runners-up to Penrith in the grand final last year, was evidence that they had good systems and staff in place.

"The club is in rude, good health, regardless of what any ill-informed person might want to say," Gardner said.

"You've got to go back to where we were at when we [the Wests Group] took the club over [in November 2017].

"We'd been wooden spooners three years in a row in first grade. There were no pathways in place, because that requires investment.

"So we had two years of trying to rebuild it and then we got hit with COVID, which basically closed the junior reps down completely.

"Since then our Flegg side made it into last year's grand final, when they got beaten by a Sione Katoa field goal in golden point, and now out Matts and Ball teams are into their grand finals. And our Tarsha Gale (under-18 girls) side also made the finals, so we're starting to see the results of hard work and investment."

Gardner was confident a host of the Matthews and Ball squads would become future first-graders.

Since their 1988 foundation season, Newcastle have won five Harold Matthews titles (1992, 2000, 2014, 2017 and 2019) and four SG Ball premierships (1990, 2001, 2004 and 2011), as well as back-to-back Flegg competitions in 1991-92.

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